


The Home We Built Ourselves

by writerdragonfly



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety & Related Mental Health Issues, Character Insert, Fix-It, Gen, Modern Character in MCU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26245417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: Tatiana Hernandez was a changeling in a world full of stories she saw played on screen. She didn't ask for this, but she's stuck here, adrift and alone. She can't fight, can't invent, can't afford to move mountains--but sometimes a difference isn't made by money or skill, just the effort made in offering a hand in comfort.or; Tony gets a emotional support Intern. It’s really unfortunate he doesn’t realize she’s from a different Earth and is about to obliterate the timeline with memes and sleep deprivation.
Relationships: Original Character & Tony Stark
Comments: 50
Kudos: 261





	The Home We Built Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheOneKrafter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOneKrafter/gifts).



> [//I may know the answers. Journeys over snow and sand. What twist in fate has brought us To tread upon this land?// - Distant Worlds (Theme), Final Fantasy XI. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKw_QzJtvAM)
> 
> As with most of my fics, updates may be slow. 
> 
> For Z and the rest of the discord crew.

# PROLOGUE

Tatiana Hernandez was a changeling. 

She’d always owned her body, her mind. But the fact was, she was from a different realm and brought here by some unknowable force and placed into a house identical to hers but wholly not. The people around her were the same but no one knew her, her family didn’t seem to exist at all. 

It didn’t take long before the panic got to be too much and she lost it, and then everything radically changed again. 

She woke up in the hospital, a nameless lost girl who was interviewed too quickly after passing out and couldn’t manage to give her own name let alone get the details of the year right or who the president was. 

“Trump as president? This is reality, not an episode of the Simpsons.”

She was so confused and tangled and panicked that she didn’t pull all her threads together until a week had passed and no one claimed her and she became just another ward of the state. 

Last they shared, they believed her to be some poor unlucky soul dropped off a child trafficking ring. 

Perhaps she was, but not in the way they were expecting. 

She remembers her real name. Taylor Sheppard. Born April 1, 2003 in Sutherland, Iowa to Harlan and Letty Sheppard. It was 2020 and she was sixteen and then she wasn’t. 

Her parents are still alive and living in this world. Her siblings were never born and her parents never met. 

It’s 2001, Tatiana is being called Jane by everyone involved in her case and she hates that she can’t say, “this is who I am,” without being boarded up in a mental health unit for the rest of her life. 

They give her a last name so she can be enrolled in school. Hernandez. Because everyone with a mild golden tan is Spanish. 

She doesn’t really know her family history. She knew her mother and grandmother were Latina, but she’d never asked about where they were from. She hadn’t cared to connect with her heritage when all that mattered to her were video games and books, movies and fanfiction. It was always one of those, maybe someday things. Maybe someday that now will never happen. How different is this world already?

Jane Hernandez turns eighteen two months after her real birthday. She celebrates by using her after care stipend on an apartment since the foster family of the month asked her to leave. 

She petitions the court to change her name. “I don’t remember who I was,” she lies, “but I want to be more than a Jane Doe.”

Tatiana Hernandez starts college in the fall, and tries her hardest to make the best of it. 

She makes it three semesters before she falls apart again. 

It’s 2005, and she’s twenty one and heartbreakingly alone and Tony Stark is a real living person. He’s splashed on the covers of tabloids and the internet is rife with stories and Tony Stark’s existence is real and permanent. 

But time goes on and so does she. 

She gets a part time job as a library page, makes eight dollars an hour reshelving books and assisting with children’s crafts. It isn’t a bad life, but she wants so much more. 

She hates herself for failing that. 

It’s 2008 and she’s almost twenty five and Stark Industries has an opening for a library assistant as a paid internship in their New York City building and she’s not really qualified but her online friends support her anyway. She applies and gets flown out and _the real Pepper Potts_ congratulates her when she’s accepted by the hiring board. She can’t quite believe it. 

They give her room and board in one of the onsite dorms, and she picks up extra shifts as an intern in a secretarial position when she needs extra cash to support her gaming habit or when she decides to research her way into investing in Netflix. 

They offer to pay for college, and she considers it. 

She still feels like a failure, like she’s wasted her time and energy in doing nothing. But she’s here. Getting paid and being housed and it’s exhausting work but it’s thrilling too. She’s a part of something important and she knows it, even if no one will expect what is coming. 

It’s 2008, and she’s dead tired, coming off a triple shift with a sleepless night playing Final Fantasy XII and drinking caffeine free Pepsi and fruitlessly hoping for the sweet release of exhaustion to pull her under. She’s been awake for forty six hours, still has three hours on her shift taking notes on the new experimental ballistic vests discussion or whatever they decide to devolve into talking about over expensive coffee and day old croissants. 

The break room in the area isn’t the best. The vending machines are too far away so it’s not used very often, but it’s closer so Tatiana uses it anyway. The freezer is always empty, so she’s taken to storing a couple boxes of hot pockets in it for her shifts interning in the department for ease of access alone. 

That’s exactly what she’s headed for, snapping at some starstruck intern with an infernal autograph book who is screaming “their idol is here, omgomgomg!”, before slipping into the tiny break room and groaning when she sees someone standing in front of the fridge. 

“Dude,” she glares, crossing her arms and staring at the man who is just standing there with a mug of what’s probably the cheap coffee from the pot in the room that she’s pretty sure only gets replaced every couple days. It probably tastes like feet. 

“What?” He sounds more confused than anything else. Judging by the purple smudged under his eyes she’d wager a guess he also hasn’t slept in several days. 

“Can you _move?”_ She’s pretty sure that came out a lot ruder than she intended, but she’s hungry and tired and not sure if the next three hours are worth the money. 

“No one uses this room, why are you in here?”

“ _I_ use this room when assigned to this area because _I_ don’t want to walk to the other room and be inundated with immature pissants who argue over whether their senpai noticed them after the last proposal they entered. Also, the freezer. It contains everything I need to sustain myself, like hot pockets and popsicles.”

The man seems to startle at her argument, before finally looking up to face her straight on. 

Aaaaaand she’s just yelled at Tony Stark. Wonderful! Fantastic!

She expects recrimination at the least. What she gets is, “What kind of hot pockets?”

Things only get weirder from there. 

Tatiana doesn’t really have a lot of friends. A few online friends, who in another part of the world she would travel to visit if she could afford it, and a couple of the other library interns are okay. 

She isn’t good with social interaction, but she tries her best to fake it. It’s hard to feel wholly and totally herself when she knows she can’t explain her foreknowledge or her past. 

This... is an entirely different story. 

She’d always loved Tony Stark in the movies. His character growth alone was admirable. 

But this is the real man, flesh and blood and clearly brimming with anxiety.

It’s 2008, and she doesn’t know when it happens but this could be the _last day_ before his mentor throws him under the bus completely and ships him off to a kidnapping plot. She can’t stop it, it’s not as if Tony Stark would choose to believe her over someone he spent half his life admiring. 

She thinks for a moment, and she can see the anxiety tensing up Stark’s shoulders again at the realization that she’s finally recognized him. That their interaction is about to become wildly different. 

“I have pepperoni and four-meat, but the four-meat is probably freezer burnt at this point. I have enough for both of us, but please stop drinking that coffee. I don’t think anyone has made new coffee in the last week.” She says instead, ushering him toward the sink as if words alone would get him to pour it out. 

She is only one person, hardly a competent adult, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing on a good day. But this, this she can do. She can treat this man like a fucking human being and not an endless source of blueprints. She can treat him like she wishes she could still teach her younger siblings, like she wishes—it doesn’t matter, she can do this. 

“It’s _coffee_ ,” he protests and she vaguely remembers him drinking smoothies his bots made him containing engine oil or something to that effect. 

“It’s a biohazard. I can’t promise you good coffee, but I can promise something highly caffeinated and not too bad with microwaveable pizza pockets.” 

“I’ve had worse—“ she snorts, interrupting him and trying to ignore the sound that just left her body. She fails, and feels herself flushing. 

“I’m sure you have. That’s not the point. I have a stash of cold sodas and energy drinks in the veggie drawer. No one has touched them, because most of the few brave souls ever come in here are the same ones who order copious amounts of takeout three nights a week and haven’t seen a vegetable that isn’t drenched in sauce in a decade. It’s unhealthy, but far better for you than week old coffee that’s probably growing fungus.”

“Has anyone told you that you’re really pushy?”

“I haven’t slept in two days and not even for fun reasons, I couldn’t care less, kid.”

Holy hell, she just called Tony Stark _kid._ He’s probably old enough to be _her father_ and she called _him_ kid.

He bursts out laughing, pours his coffee in the sink and sits at the table three feet away. 

“All right, you got me. You can tell me all about your scientific proposal while we eat.”

“Oh, honey,” Tatiana laughs, finally opening the freezer to grab a couple boxes of delicious calories, “I’m not a scientist. My main internship is with the Stark Industries Science Library. I’m only on this part of the campus because I pick up shifts as a secretarial intern for the science department when I need the extra cash.”

“Honey?” He responds, wrinkling his nose a little before shrugging, “Is that even legal for tax purposes?”

“I mean, they hired me? So I would assume so. I mostly take notes while your predominately male R&D department circle jerks around.”

“Circ—“ Stark laughs, it’s loud and wild and somehow one of the saddest things she’s ever heard. She grins at him though, because he looks legitimately happy, laughing like that. She only turns away when the microwave beeps. 

How long has it been since he slept? Did everything really start this early, and only come up loudly later?

“Let’s be honest, darling—okay, no, darling doesn’t quite fit you,” she waves her hand as if erasing her words before continuing, “You could lead the world in scientific breakthroughs in more departments if you encouraged your hiring process to evaluate more women or people of color in the STEM fields. I saw one— _one_ —woman in a position of power in that last meeting and everyone treated her like _she_ was an intern. She probably has more degrees than god, and they wanted her to refill the coffee carafe.” The first plate slides onto the table as she talks. 

“You think I—“

“Sweetheart, you’re the CEO. You can set a goddamn example. Anyway, I didn’t mean to go off on you about that. You look like death is about to take you to the river, so eat. I’ve got a fine curated selection of sodas to choose from, plus a couple cans of Liquid Ice. Have you got a preference, or should I just lob some drinks at you?”

“Take me to the river?” He asks for clarification after picking one of the energy drinks. She smiles and very carefully sits it on the table near him without offering it hand to hand. 

“The River Styx? My... my mother used to say it when we stayed up too late,” she confides, settling down with her own plate of warmed up pastry. She has a bottle of water, no need to upset her stomach too much before she’s back to listening to men talk about themselves. She misses her family with all she is, but some days are easier than others. 

“So, librarian,” Stark says, “Can I get your name?” 

“You can have my name, honey,” she admits, opening her bottle with her teeth when she can’t quite grasp the plastic seal, “but I have no interest in sleeping with you or climbing up the proverbial ladder.”

He looks... chastened... at the rebuke. She doesn’t really blame him though. His life is clearly full of people who want him for the notoriety or his money. She doesn’t want any of that. 

She just wants to be happy and... she had always wished him happiness too. Was that wrong? 

“A friend,” he offers, and he looks so young and nervous that her heart aches with it. 

“Tatiana Hernandez, but my friends call me Taeshi.”

“Anthony Stark,” he says with a sliver of a smile, offering his hand, “you can call me Tony,”

They part not long after that. Work calls. She leaves first, throwing her bag over her shoulder and reclipping her badge to her hip as she heads back to the conference rooms. 

She doesn’t see him leave. 

  
  


Two days later, Tony Stark is attacked in Afghanistan.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to comment~! I welcome the conversation.
> 
> Hit me up anywhere to harangue me into writing, talk fic, fandom, or whatever catches your fancy.  
> [Tumblr: writerdragonfly](https://writerdragonfly.tumblr.com)  
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> [Twitter: writerdragonfly ](https://twitter.com/writerdragonfly)  
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